ASU Professor and Distinguished Sustainability Scientist Randy Cerveny announced in March 2017 that Antarctica has reached record-breaking warm temperatures – in some places over 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

Cerveny, a Rapporteur of Climate and Weather Extremes for the World Meteorological Organization, has collaborated with other WMO experts to measure the impact of rising Antarctic temperatures on the rest of the planet. The team has published their findings in a recent report.

"The polar regions of our planet have been termed the ‘canary’ in our global environment," he says. "Because of their sensitivity to climate changes, sometimes the first influences of changes in our global environment can be seen in the north and south polar regions...The more we know of this critically important area to our environment, the more we can understand how all of our global environments are interlinked.”